1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic music composition and, in particular to, a music composition method and system for composing music piece using a touch interaction with a touchscreen-enabled portable device.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the communication technology has been rapidly developed to provide better performance and various new functions have been integrated into a mobile phone, the user interface has been expanded to accommodate control the many functions that are operable in the mobile phone.
Recently, the mobile phones have advanced in entertainment functions and even some enable the user to create entertainment contents. With the widespread of touchscreen-enabled devices, the entertainment functions are implemented in association with the gestural interaction through the touchscreen.
A music creation application is one good example of an entertainment application and typically uses a software sequencer. A sequencer-based application is implemented for the user to place each note (tone, sound, and melody) on a Note Scale or arrange patterns, i.e. pieces each containing Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) note information in units of measure. As known, the MIDI is an industry standard protocol that enables electronic musical instruments, such as keyboard controllers and computers, to communicate with each other.
However, it is not easy to implement the music applications in a portable device, e.g. mobile phone. In the case of the melody creation method which receives the melody consisting of notes, the limited size of the display screen of portable device makes creating a melody difficult. In the case of the pattern arrangement method, even known as a typical music composition method, it cannot achieve its merits for diverse and intuitive composition in the size-limited portable device. Particularly, the conventional music composition methods are complicated for the user, especially beginner, to compose a multi-instrument sound music like a concert requiring technical knowledge for mixing the instruments.